The End Game

by Catherine Coulter

  “So you’ve heard of my partner, have you?”

  Vanessa tried for a smile and managed a small one. “I gotta say, Mike, the guy is too hot for his own good. And that cleft in the chin, I’ve always been a sucker for those.” She didn’t say he looked like the predator he was, hard, no-nonsense, probably ate nails for breakfast, like Savich.

  “It’s a pleasure, Agent Grace,” Nicholas said. “Mike’s told me a lot about you. As for the hole in my chin, it does make shaving a bother. Are you up for some questions?”

  “Yes, there’s so much. Then I’m going to sleep for a month, well, maybe two months.” She closed her eyes for a moment. She hadn’t realized it would hurt so much to talk. Who cared? It was nothing compared to the Mack truck squatting on her chest. She could do this, she had to do this.

  58

  BISHOP TO F8

  Savich pulled a chair up close, took her hand in his. “I know you very nearly died, Agent Grace. I know it’s a miracle you’re still with us. All of us are very pleased that you are. Your uncle is right, if you can’t go on, you simply tell us, and we’ll let you rest.” He paused for a moment, gauging how cogent she was. Enough, he thought. “Thank you for agreeing to answer our questions.” Savich then stood and backed away.

  Nicholas came a bit closer, looked down at the woman who should by rights be dead twice over, what with the bullet to the chest and the fall from the burning building.

  “Agent Grace told us you’ve been undercover in COE for the past four months. Can you tell us exactly what your mission was?”

  “It all started with the chatter about a special new bomb under development, said to be undetectable by any of our scanners. The genius making this bomb, we found out, is Matthew Spenser, also known as the Bishop. He was operating out of Belfast at that time.

  “I posed as a bomb expert, which I am, and an IRA bomber I worked with, Ian McGuire, introduced me to Spenser and I joined his group, COE. My mission was to steal the specs once Matthew perfected the bomb. He showed it to me, told me how it would be undetectable, and so small, you can’t believe how small they are. Gold coins, the size of a fifty-cent piece.

  “But Matthew was very secretive, very careful, with everyone. He only told each person in the group what they needed to know to pull off the next bombing.”

  “Undetectable bombs,” Mike repeated quietly. “I can’t imagine how that’s even possible.”

  “I know they’re made of gold and tungsten, with carbon-fiber hulls, which wouldn’t ever set off the scanners. You could walk onto a plane with one in your pocket, leave it in the magazine pocket, and walk away, and bring the whole thing down, or you could leave it in a coffee shop, or a police station or a stadium. But they were theoretical only, until now. There are, of course, other components I couldn’t find out about. And then he perfected it.”

  Savich leaned forward. “Bayway was a test?”

  “Yes. I’d built a bomb as well, and that was the second blast, designed to destroy, not kill.” Her breathing hitched. “I didn’t know, didn’t know. How many workers were killed?”

  Mike said, “Fifteen people, and the blast destroyed the refinery. I’d say Spenser’s bomb is ready for market.”

  Savich asked, “How did Matthew Spenser find out you were an undercover agent?”

  Vanessa whispered, “When we got back to the apartment in Brooklyn, I knew I had to tell Uncle Carl immediately what was happening. I was in the bathroom, sending him a text, and Matthew came in to bully me. When Uncle Carl’s message came back, he heard the ding on my phone. I tried to talk my way out of it—the message was ambiguous—but it didn’t work. Ian tried to protect me, and Matthew killed him, then he killed me, or he thought he had. Then he set the apartment on fire with Andy’s special gasoline mixes. I managed to get out but fell off the fire escape. And that’s all I remember until I woke up here.”

  She lay pale and silent now, staring up at Savich. She licked her dry lips, drank a bit more water. Finally, she whispered, “When he looked at me, I knew it was the end. His eyes were dead. I guess it was the only way he could deal with the ultimate betrayal, both Ian and me.”

  Vanessa couldn’t get spit in her mouth. She nodded again toward the water carafe. Why did her mouth feel like a desert?

  Grace immediately placed the straw against her lips.

  He looked down at Vanessa, his niece, his brother’s only child, then up at the agents. “We need to stop here for a moment. Nessa, while you were in surgery, we realized Darius is actually Zahir Damari, the assassin hired to kill the vice president.”

  Savich nodded to Mike. “She figured this out already. My question is why you people at the CIA didn’t think this information was important enough to pass it along to us?”

  Grace shot a look of approval to Mike, splayed his hands in front of him, “Please understand, everything has been moving so fast, we only just made the connection ourselves, plus I wanted to tell you in person. We knew about Zahir Damari, but we had no idea he was the same man as this Darius who joined up with COE. This wasn’t a matter for phones, you see.”

  For a moment Vanessa couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t think her way through it, then said, “Darius, he’s really Zahir Damari? I knew Darius wasn’t his real name, but I didn’t expect this.”

  Nicholas said, “How did he hook up with Spenser and your group?”

  “He showed up at our camp in South Tahoe, a million in cash, and he told us his name was Darius Coles, and he went to Oxford, which was one of the reasons Matthew talked to him in the first place. Matthew went to Oxford, too. But the way he hooked Matthew was that he claimed he’d lost friends in the July 2005 London terrorist bombing. He appeared to be genuinely surprised to learn that Matthew had lost his family. All a ploy, of course.”

  Grace said, “Based on Vanessa’s information, we ran Darius Coles through every known database, and a few off-book ones. It was a false identity.”

  Mike said slowly, “Now all the pins are lined up. Zahir came to COE, to Spenser, because, like you, he wanted the bomb for his clients.”

  “The clients would be Iran and Hezbollah,” Carl Grace said. “This chatter about the amazing new bomb the CIA heard about has been heard elsewhere, obviously. But now we believe Zahir’s mission was two-pronged: to get Spenser’s bomb and kill the vice president.”

  Nicholas said, “May I have a crack at the photo and the identity? Savich and I have designed a new update for the NGA database utilizing a different method for identifying underlying bone structure. Perhaps we’ll be able to find something that will allow us to identify him.”

  Grace nodded. “We were hoping you could help. I’ll have it for you when we’re done here.”

  Vanessa said, “But how can that be right? Zahir was hired to assassinate the vice president? Because she’s so against the peace talks? Why would Iran and Hezbollah care? I mean, the president is in charge, he’s the one who insisted on the peace talks, he’s the one who believes if he can make them happy, they won’t continue to threaten Israel and the West.”

  Savich looked at her pale face, her eyes losing focus, and knew she couldn’t hang on for much longer. “All sound points, Agent Grace, but think about who these people are, what they are. Now, one more question and then we’ll leave you in peace. Where is Matthew Spenser now? And Andy Tate? And the rest of the members of the COE?”

  “With Ian dead, I think all the other COE members have already run for cover. None of them is stupid, most are online, anyway. So that would leave only Matthew and Andy.”

  Savich continued, “If Spenser hadn’t shot you, what would you be doing today?”

  “Working with Andy to comb through the data they stole from the cyber-attack on the oil companies—verify the schedules for Yorktown, the president’s, the vice president’s, find out all the visiting oil company representatives coming, itineraries, hotels, eve
rything. But most important was getting the Yorktown plant blueprints.”

  Mike had nailed it.

  Savich said, “So Matthew plans to blow up Yorktown when all these people are there, using his new bomb?”

  Vanessa closed her eyes, swallowed. “I don’t know. Maybe. If he does, it will be worse than Bayway. I think he only used a small part of one of his bombs there. With the plans, Matthew and Andy will know how to get into Yorktown and plant one of his bombs. You have to find him, stop him.” She tried to press Mike’s hand, but didn’t have the strength.

  A low, angry male voice sounded behind them. “You will all leave now. As you can see, Ms. Grace is gravely injured. All of you, out, now.”

  It was Dr. Pruitt, her surgeon. They stepped back to watch him lean over her, listen to her heart, take her pulse, then fiddle with the IV. In the next moment she was asleep. Pruitt turned on them. “If she is well enough, you may see her tomorrow, but not until then. Do I make myself clear?”

  He left the room without waiting for an answer, Craig Swanson following him out. Carl Grace said, his voice lowered, “I know you have more questions, need more information to make sense of all this. I brought some recordings Vanessa has sent me over the past four months. We’ll go in the corner, keep our voices down, and listen until you’re satisfied you’ve got the full picture.”

  But first Savich called the Secret Service to warn the detail searching Yorktown.

  59

  KNIGHT TAKES E1

  Grace hit play on his tablet, and they heard Vanessa’s voice, calm and strong.

  Darius came to COE with a bag of money and the Devil’s tongue. Don’t get me wrong, Darius wasn’t a hammer, he was subtle about it, slow, easy, methodical. It took me a while to realize that he was poisoning Matthew, convincing him to stop targeting oil refiners because it did no good. He needed to target people. And he needed to finish creating his magic gold coins—his bombs—and do it quickly. It was time to strike.

  She paused a moment, then:

  How to describe him so you’ll understand, Uncle Carl? Matthew Spenser was an idealist, a genius, a man with a bright future, until the terrorist bomb that killed his family in London on July 7, 2005, changed everything. He became committed to destroying all our ties to terrorist nations and to him that meant stopping all Middle East oil imports into the West. His plan was to destroy infrastructure because without funding from oil wealth, big organized terrorist groups couldn’t continue. Then Darius came and he changed.

  Darius talked to Matthew day and night about how he could leave his mark, how he could attack the terrorists by taking out the people who wanted to protect them, fund them, empathize with them. Darius convinced him the Americans, our own president, wanted to make peace with them, and yet our president, instead of doing his job, protecting the American people, protecting our allies, is at a supposed peace table in Geneva, drinking tea with these soulless maniacs, and working on diplomatic solutions, ridiculous, all of it.

  Matthew works well into the night on his bomb, but he won’t tell me how close he is to perfecting it, won’t even tell Ian, his very best friend.

  Carl Grace hit stop, loaded in another recording.

  I overheard Darius and Matthew talking. Darius was supposed to meet someone, get a package. They never discussed what it was. I listened and knew the pickup had fallen through and now he had another, at a diner in Baltimore, the Silver Corner. I saw his contact once when he delivered some information about the grids to Darius, but I couldn’t find out his name. I took photos of him. I hope you can identify him.

  Carl Grace punched off the recording. “We do have his photos and have been running them, but we’ve come up empty so far. I’ll get his photos to you, see what you can find. The secondary pickup for the diner was for yesterday. We’re getting the video feeds as I speak.”

  He turned the recording back on. “This is three days before Bayway.”

  Uncle Carl, last week, Matthew was going on about how we must change the course of history, that political discourse is now absurd because the Iranians are about to eliminate half the world with their nukes, ISIS is on the move, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the worst of the worst, want to kill us all. He spoke of Israel, their people living in constant danger and conflict.

  He said over and over that these people had been killing each other for centuries and they weren’t about to stop now, it was hardwired in their DNA. They still lived in the Middle Ages, not the modern world. Talk was worth nothing to them. The only thing they understood was violence, and force. And then he pounded the table and said again, “violence and force.” The way he said it, it scared me to my toes. And then he said, “I have to be the agent of change so we can save our culture, our people, our lives.”

  Uncle Carl, Darius has changed him utterly. He’s different. I don’t know what he’s capable of anymore. Remember I told you before my first test with Matthew at Grangemouth in Scotland, he emphasized that no one could be hurt. No one. But now? I don’t know.

  In a couple of days, we hit Bayway. I’ve got my bomb ready, but I have this feeling that Matthew has perfected his bomb and this is where he wants to test it, a bigger explosion, a bigger statement. Our contact is a night supervisor named Larry Reeves. Matthew paid him a ton of money to give us the plans. It’s how he’s always worked, as you know—pay off someone close to the site to get the blueprints, and find the best places to plant bombs for maximum damage. Sometimes he gets access online, sometimes they bring physical prints.

  Nicholas raised a hand and Carl turned off the recorder.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t warn us Bayway was coming.”

  Grace said, “It wasn’t my decision. We stepped up their security. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  Mike wanted to stomp him, stomp all of those who’d made such a stupid decision. “Save us from our own law enforcement. Fifteen dead, Agent Grace, and even the one who sold out, Larry Reeves, is dead, killed in the very blast he helped facilitate. I know you heard three FBI agents were murdered as well, in an informant’s house. His name was Mr. Richard Hodges, a very nice man who overheard Reeves mouthing off in a bar about how much money he was coming into, and he called us, and died with the agents protecting him. His wife had died three years before of cancer. He ate bacon sandwiches for dinner. And the three FBI agents, all of them married with children. And now all those kids have no fathers. And you people let the whole thing happen. You stepped up security? And that’s all you’ve got to say about it?”

  Carl Grace said, “There are no simple answers, Agent Caine, you know that. Compromises must be made, to gain the greater good, sacrifices must be made.” He saw she would explode and raised a hand. “I’m very sorry for that decision, the whole series of decisions, including leaving Vanessa in place.

  “Now, I believe it was Zahir Damari who murdered the informant and the three FBI agents.”

  Nicholas said, “It makes sense. He was tying up loose ends.”

  Savich said, “We will sort out who’s to blame later. Please keep going, Agent Grace.”

  Carl turned the recording back on.

  Uncle Carl, it’s coming down to the wire. I believe Matthew when he laughs and says his bomb will be so much bigger, more powerful than anything I’d ever put together with my pathetic Semtex. When, not if, he perfects them, he could sell the formula, and any country could use it against us in unimaginable ways. I must get my hands on his notebooks, I must.

  Carl turned off the recorder. “That’s the last I heard from her until the emergency text she sent to me after Bayway. I told her to get out, but it was already too late. And then he tried to kill her.” His voice was flat, steady, but his eyes were hard with pain and hate. He said after a moment, “Do you know, not an hour after Vanessa came out of recovery, she was telling me to announce she was still alive and let her play bait. She knew he’d want to come back and
finish her off, he was that enraged at her betrayal. She could barely talk and she was begging me to let her get it right.”

  His cell phone buzzed. When he punched off, he said, “The video feeds from that diner in Baltimore and the photo of Zahir are ready for you.”

  Mike took Nicholas’s sleeve. “Dillon, Nicholas and I will be with you in a moment.”

  When they’d left, she whispered, “Listen, Nicholas, what Vanessa said, it’s a good idea. Vanessa can’t do it, but I can, I can be bait. I’ll get a red wig, crawl in bed with my Glock, yes, we can do it. Fast, we have to do it fast.”

  Nicholas grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him, pulled her up close.

  “You want to be bait? You want to take Vanessa’s place in that bed with a red wig?” He shook her. “Listen to me, I am your partner. Absolutely, one hundred percent, no. We’ll find another way to get him. I forbid it. Do you understand me? I am not putting you at risk. I don’t care if I were lying on top of you, covering every inch of you and—”

  He stiffened, his eyes went hot.

  Mike felt strangely calm, no urge at all to smack him for what he’d said, for shaking her. His anger came from fear for her. She looked at his eyes, stark, dangerous, and his face was hard, no give. She didn’t say anything, simply raised her hand and touched his cheek, traced the bruise on his jaw.

  Nicholas didn’t move as her fingers lightly passed over his face. He closed his eyes when her fingers were smoothing down his hair.

  He felt her fingers now resting on his mouth, opened his eyes, met hers. His control, his anger, all his fear for her came together, and he knew it was all over for him.

  Mike cupped his cheek, pressed her lips to his cheek. “Nicholas,” she said. Nothing more, and it was enough, it was too much.

  Nicholas pulled her tight against him, felt her heart pound against his, and kissed her, all his fear and the deep well of feelings for her, burst out, and his mouth was hard and urgent. When she leaned up and kissed him back, he went wild, but it didn’t matter because she did, too, gripping his arms, his neck, then his face, her fingers touching him, and the kiss deepened and she opened her mouth. He lifted her off her feet and pushed her against the wall, pulling her against him, never once breaking contact. His hands moved down to the small of her back, over her hips, traced around her thighs, pressed her legs open.